andie nachgeborenen wrote:
>
>
> More controversially, I recently watched Birth of a
> Nation with my daughter for her film class. A moral
> cesspool, absolutely shocking. Unvarnished and
> unapologetic propaganda for the KKK, laoded with
> racist garbage, no gloves or sugar-coating,
> unflinching about glorifying lynching. Genuinely
> appalling. Nightmarish even. Unquestionably also a
> very great work of art. Still has a reasonble claim to
> being the best film ever made. My daughter, Ms.
> Super-PC, hypersensitive to fault to hints of
> discrimination, noticed all that was awful in its
> morality and still agreed that it was a very great
> film.
I've argued in the past that the political impact of art (negative or positive) depends not on the art but on the political climate within which people respond to the art. If the context is a growing and militant left, then such works as Birth of a Nation (despite the vicious intentions of its makers) is a progressive, not a reactionary work. Know Thy Enemy. Birth of a Nation is not just racist (though it certainly is that), it is (as the title would suggest)aggressively nationalist. Within the right framework it could become anti-imperialist propaganda. And I doubt that in _any_ context it could be rightist or racist agitation: i.e., its viciousness will have an impact only on an audience prepared by political convictions to respond to it. I'm using the terms "propaganda" and "agitation" in the 2d-international sense (as passed on by Lenin from Kautsky in WITBD.)
Carrol